Question: Is monastic life sponsored or does the individual have to financially support themselves?
Response: In Asia, it is traditional that monastics dedicate themselves to practice and teaching while the laypeople provide financially and materially for the monastics support. This system, which has existed since the time of the Buddha, enabled both the monastics and the laypeople to focus on what they were already doing.
The responsibility of the monastics is to provide teachings and that of the laypeople is to provide support, or dana. Since monastics live simply, providing for them is relatively easy.
In the West, most people are not familiar with this tradition. Monastics who remain within Asian-based sanghas receive support as the ethnic practitioners provide support and newer non-ethnic practitioners quickly learn how things work.
A problem often develops, however, when the monastic lives in a western culture. If there are people who have attended monasteries and Buddhist centers, they will understand the system and teach others. But often, the tradition of dana is unknown or there is not a large enough group to support the monastic. As a result, we see monastics having to take jobs, live on welfare, or find other means to support themselves.
When I started teaching in Elkhart, Indiana, where I had come to help my mother, I mentioned one day how I was going to Indonesia to attend a conference with my Teacher. In what could have been a study on how to ask a question without raising any possibility of offending the one being questioned, one of the ladies in the group asked how I supported myself. How did I have the means to fly halfway around the world. (I explained that since the request had come from my Teacher, my ticket and accommodations were provided through him.)
She quickly added that if the question was offensive, she was very sorry and there was no need for me to answer. I was glad she asked because it’s the only way to know an individual monastic's situation.
So the answer is that support in the form of the four requisites of food, shelter, clothing, and medical care is usually provided. But with monastics now traveling farther afield to teach, individual's situations can vary a great deal.